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SyncEvolution 0.9.1 beta released

SyncEvolution 0.9.1 beta 2 is available, release after fixing all issues which were found in beta 1. It is going to replace 0.9 as the official stable release soon, so this is the chance to find and report problems before they sneak into the final 0.9.1 - die, bugs, die!

SyncEvolution 0.9.1 beta 2 -> 0.9.1, 26.10.2009

Minor changes:

spelling fixes in NEWS file (--source-type => --source-property)

update to zh_CN

improved autotools compilation of libsynthesis

SyncEvolution 0.9.1 beta 1 -> 0.9.1 beta 2, 19.10.2009

Several fixes:

Receiving photos from Mobical failed because Mobical does not quite follow the vCard 2.1 (Moblin Bugzilla #6668). Sending photos worked, but added a few bytes of garbage at the end of each photo (typically ignored when showing). Parser was made more tolerant by Synthesis and encoder bug was fixed.

Task priorities used by Mobical and Evolution did not match: vCalendar 1.0 uses 1-3, iCalendar 2.0 uses 1-9 (MB #6664). SyncEvolution now translates between the two ranges, with some information getting lost when talking to a peer which only supports the smaller range.

The workaround for detecting an endless stream of Alert 222 messages (caused by misbehavior of certain servers when a specific message has to be resent) aborted certain valid (albeit somewhat pathologic) sync sessions. Improved the heuristic so that it still catches the real loop without aborting in that other case.

sync-ui: now disables sources which are not supported when setting up a configuration, like memos on Moblin (MB #6672). Previously the source was enabled, which prevented using using the configuration as-is on the command line.

.rpms on syncevolution.org no longer specify a dependency on certain Perl features. This depencency was a problem on Mandriva. Unwanted hard dependencies on libecal in syncevolution.org binaries are avoided for real this time (MB#6552).

Trying to remove a non-existent configuration via the command line now raises an error, to catch typos (MB #6673).

SyncEvolution 0.9 -> 0.9.1 beta 1, 06.10.2009

Mobical and Memotoo are now officially supported.

Memotoo uses vCard 2.1 with several Evolution specific extensions. It uses iCalendar 2.0, however, without actually supporting the advanced features of it. Times are converted to UTC and meeting information are lost.

Mobical uses vCard 2.1 and vCalendar 1.0 as data formats, with the result that many properties used in Evolution are not supported by the server. In particular calendar support is very limited (known issues when events are in time zones different from the one selected locally and on the server, no support for meetings). For details see README.mobical.

Beware that the Mobical SyncML password is not the same as the one for their web site. Log into mobical.net, then go to "my accounts >> configure new device >> manual settings" to find the SyncML credentials.

It is now possible to compile database backends outside of SyncEvolution, install them and have SyncEvolution use them automatically like any other backend. The backend API has been enhanced considerably. For example, backend developers have access to a modular set of utility classes that can be mixed into a specific implementation. Backends can access the internal Synthesis representation directly and therefore no longer need their own vCard/vCalendar/iCalendar parser.

The sqlite demo backend can be enabled and compiled again with --enable-sqlite. It demonstrates how to map directly from the Synthesis field list to some internal format (an SQLite database schema in this case).

Other changes:

Resend messages to cope with intermittent loss of network connectivity (Moblin Bugzilla #3427). See the new "ResendDuration" and "ResendDelay" configuration properties for details.

The logging of added and updated items was enhanced. Events, tasks and memos are logged with a short description instead of just the local ID. The description for contacts was improved.

The sync UI allowed to enable calendar and task synchronization with Google although Google does not support that (MB#5871). In new installations this is prevented by clearing the URI for those data categories.

Importing work and home phone numbers from Google into desktop Evolution works better, because SyncEvolution now adds the "VOICE" flag expected by Evolution (MB#6501).

SyncEvolution command line uses the GNOME keyring when the new --keyring option is given.

SSL certificate checking with Google is enabled by default and enabled in Moblin, because libsoup in that distro has the necessary fix. Without that fix, all connection attempts fail. The binaries on syncevolution.org are compiled with --disable-ssl-certificate-check, so users who want the additional security must enable it.

syncevolution.org binaries should be compatible with a wider range of Evolution releases again (MB#6552).

Some sync UI enhancements (describe sync services, avoid crash with very long input in some of the text boxes (MB#5219), set application icon, improved some strings).

Improved checks which logs in the logdir belong to the current server (MB#5215).

These binaries include the new "sync-ui" GTK GUI and were compiled for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy). Older distributions like Debian 4.0 (Etch) can no longer be supported with precompiled binaries because of missing libraries, but the source still compiles when not enabling the GUI (the default).

The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz and .rpm archives in http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/evolution. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 0.9 .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise.